My Seven Lives

"Kalinová's life is like a lens refracting twentieth-century history. Sometimes when you zoom in on particular details, you get a bigger picture…" —European Literature Network

"In My Seven Lives moments of high drama and tragedy co-exist effortlessly with everyday life. Kalinová grounds her momentous material so deeply in a world of family, friends, work and the ordinary that its joys, terrors, humor and sorrows feel closer to our own lives than they otherwise would. The book's interview form is highly effective in moving back and forth between the political/historical and the personal. There are even times when Juráňová's questions compel Kalinová to reconsider or look closer at moments or issues she might have missed if she were writing her memoir on her own. Agneša Kalinová passed away in 2014 but she has left behind an account of the darkest chapters of the 20th century that is as highly personal as it is universal, showing much of the light, humor and creativity that faced off against repressive conformism and hatred, and which continues to survive." —B O D Y

"The conversational structure of this biography helps it sustain an immediacy and readability that might be absent from a more traditional biographical tome, and it allows Agneša's bright and positive personality to frame the stages of her life and discuss the context of each in greatly informative detail. Jana Juráňová's thoughtful and compassionate questions add to this greatly. We don't simply learn the facts but how they played out in complex human and social reality. It's startling to realize, from reading this work, how narratives such as this one can help us preserve the spirit of its society in which so much happened, collectively and interactively, in the heady atmosphere of central Europe across those crucial decades—and why it matters." —World Literature Online

"If you ever wondered why some Jews in Europe did not try to escape, or why some Holocaust survivors returned to the country that had persecuted them, or why residents of Soviet-bloc countries did not immediately defect when allowed to visit the West, Kalinová's narrative will help you understand." —Times Literary Supplement

"Along with the structure provided by Jana Juráňová's insightful but inobtrusive questions, the book benefits from the unique insight of the translator Júlia Sherwood, who lived through many of its key events herself. Agneša Kalinová's My Seven Lives provides intriguing portraits of 20th-century Czechoslovakia by women whose experiences were not entirely typical, but which display the intensity of cultural and literary life in the region. A valuable source for specialists of social and gender history, as well as for students of Slovak, Czech, and Central European culture." —Bohemia